


Standing

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Headcanon, Missing Scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 15,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of missing-moments-type short fics, plus some movie scene ideas. New: chapter 15. A movie-fic version of the scene in Tigris's cellar, incorporating some echoes of the stream-side scene from the first book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Standing

Standing: _noun_ : Position in society. _verb_ : Tolerating, enduring. _adjective_ : Upright, not yet felled. _noun_ : Position from which one may assert rights. 

↔

How dare he, is all she can think. How can he deny her this, a real moment of maternal affection, a chance to be what they ought to be — a prosperous family, not just decent but proud, everything they always should have been. 

She'll admit she didn't think it would be in this way: as the family of a victor. Reapings don't touch the better sorts, and if they do, well, you can bet that the family fell on hard times and thought they could take tesserae without anyone realizing. Occasionally, _obviously_ , mistakes and highly improbable things happen. So, not that she ever thought a son of hers would be reaped, but once it did happen she wouldn't have thought this one in particular capable of becoming a victor. But she watched the entire thing and there you have it. 

And now he will not allow her to hold him and fawn over him as she would like to, to show him her pride. He lets his father hold him and get emotional, and he looks up to see how the cameras are nearly all taken up with the commotion that the girl and the small sister are making as they whirl around together, shrieking with laughter like the ill-bred things they are. With that in the foreground he pulls from his father's arms and gives her a brief hug and says “Hi, Ma,” not waiting to hear the things that she'd like to tell him, and then he moves on and lets his brothers half-wrestle him around the room and muss his nicely styled hair and tease him about courting a girl on live television. “Hey, hey, the leg,” he protests, starting to laugh, and the older two offer crude commentary about losing appendages below the waist and she feels a flush of fury and embarrassment that the cameras finally turned their attention back to her family for this of all moments. 

One of these stylists pops out of nowhere and puts his hair back in order before they go out to the public, and he holds still for that Capitol woman far better than he ever did for his own mother. Then she has to watch him hold hands with the girl, and it's no better seeing her son be taken with a Seam brat in person than it was on the television, but at least the girl is well cleaned up. And, mercy, her mother must still have some sense of decent behavior even though she turned her back on town all those years ago (fool that she is, though maybe they deserved each other), because she says, “Peeta is the very model of what a young man should be,” and indicates that her daughter should perhaps see a little less of him. Sometimes people know their place. It's refreshing. 

He wants to live alone, he says, on the way to the Justice Building to receive the house keys. She can tell he's lying. Always could. She studies the size and emptiness of the place when he lets them go see it, and she isn't surprised when he complains that it's lonely a few weeks later. “You aren't asking us to move up to that house, are you?” she tells him. “You'd make all of us walk to work in the weather, hot or cold? I'm sure you didn't think of that. Not having to work anymore, and all. You'll just have to adjust.” The others look like they're thinking of protesting that they would happily move into the Victor's Village if asked, but she just settles herself in her chair with satisfaction, and they don't say anything. They'd see in the end that she's right. Miners are the ones who walk to work.

He finds a way of pushing back at her, though, because then he starts working in the bakery again. Working! A victor! He says it's just to help out, he's not to be paid, it's just because he's at loose ends. The false humility does not sit well. She finally has to talk to her husband about it, alone at the end of the day because that's the only time she can ever get anywhere with him, and explain that it simply isn't appropriate to have a victor working in the shop. Not through the business day, when anyone and everyone in the district can stop in and see him and just pretend to be making a purchase, and not during morning rush, when they're all needed to be working flat out and simply don't have time for people gawking at a celebrity and clogging up the line at the register. He'd have to stop working to sign autographs or some nonsense, and then he'd be worse than no use. No, if he truly wants to help, it can only be after hours, during prep for the next morning, when it's just them. After all, this is for family time, is it not? Not for charity.

Charity, oh, the very thought of it rankles. She doesn't mind the things his money buys — good shoes and coats for each season, repairs and upgrades to the electric lines into the bakery and by extension to their apartment above it. That isn't charity, those are sensible investments. They are not poor. What rankles is that he let slip that within the sanctity of the home they are not always prosperous. 

Despite her best efforts to rein in her husband's soft-hearted impulses and the bad example he'd set for the boys. Despite her best efforts to maintain a presentable appearance. Despite their _status_. They are _merchants_. He said that the baker's family only gets to eat the stale, unsold products of their work. He said it on national television.

She tries to tell herself that she should be proud of her economical efforts. That it isn't true that they never have fresh bread or fresh sweets. That she should be pleased that somewhere within that foolish daydreaming head full of cake icing and girls he noticed that they don't let things go to waste in this family. But it hurt. 

Her husband thinks she's angry with their youngest son for telling the story about him being in love with the apothecary's daughter till she ran off to the Seam. Let him think that. The entire district knows about that little scandal, even if they forgot that they knew. She may have started out second choice, but his first choice is an impoverished beaten-down widow now and she's the one who's the baker's wife and the only one in this family with a head for the books. No, the problem is that now the entire district has reason to think that she turns a profit by taking it out of her sons' mouths. And she can't even bring it up to the people who matter, or they'll think she's protesting too much.

It's a week or so before he'll prance off to the Victory Tour, one of these evenings when he's deigning to stay for supper. All the men are crammed into the kitchen doing the prep for the next morning, and there is just not enough space for all of them anymore, the boys crabbing at each other one minute and teasing the next and running their broad shoulders into each other every time they turn around, being inefficient. She is checking the bins for the end-of-the-day balancing, and they aren't getting out of her way. Father and sons alike are hanging on his never-ending description of a drink called hot chocolate, and how if it shows up again he's going to drink his helping before eating any breakfast like the girl did. It's ostentatious. And she has had chocolate in her life, thank you very much, though she was young then and it's probably never brought into Twelve anymore by anyone except maybe the Mayor or the Head Peacekeeper. 

He is reaching up to a very high shelf for a canister of oats, and he must lose his balance on the leg the girl lost him, that or it's just his butterfingers and his attention for nothing but fancy beverages, because he loses his grip on the canister and it strikes her hard in the shoulder on its way to shattering open on the floor. 

She shrieks in pain and her hand flies out and cracks across his face. His infuriating Capitol-treated face wearing an expression like he's not to blame. “You _wasteful_ —” 

A knife is near her face. Her son has a knife aimed at her face.

He backs up a step, panting. He looks like this is shocking, like it's happening to him instead of something he is doing. She is aware that he doubled over against the counter but she didn't even see him reach toward the knife block. He blinks and his eyes dart around the room. 

“Oh don't,” his brother is saying in a low moan. 

“Peeta,” his father whispers, pleadingly.

She holds perfectly still. They have a madman in the family. This is the thanks she gets. She raises a victor and he turns on her. 

“How dare you,” she hisses.

“Don't,” Mica says a little louder.

Peeta swallows and says, “What if I do?”

Holding his gaze, she answers, “If you do what?”

Her sons have never talked back to this tone of voice. 

But this boy she barely recognizes says, “Dare.”

They stare each other down over the point of the knife.

“But you said you'd stay for supper,” her husband whispers.

“Don't,” he murmurs, in what sounds like a mindless imitation of his brother. “Anymore. Don't.” 

Who's he talking to? His pathetic father? Himself? Her? 

He limps another step backwards. The knife lands flat on the counter in a clatter. He doesn't turn his back to her on his way to the door. Then he's gone into the dark outside.

She shakes herself. Her shoulder hurts. “He's a danger to the public. We've all seen what he's capable of. We should call the Peacekeepers.”

“Ma,” Mica says feebly. Lee turns back to the prep as if nothing has happened. Her husband gazes at the door.

He stops working in the bakery. He comes to dinner from time to time. And that is the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys — or, dear reader — I have a bunch of short fics that I can't find a nice organized way of grouping together, so I'm just going to post them sometimes, in no particular order. They're generally consistent with each other and with my long (for me) piece, "Regrowth," but that's incidental to them being consistent with book canon. 
> 
> For this first piece, a note about my names for Peeta's brothers: I actually think of the middle brother as Rye most of the time, due to the lovely influence of you all. But I feel like he's Rye when he's a likeable character, and I have this rather unlikeable pathetic version in my head, so he has a different name. I also feel certain Peeta's name isn't a corruption of "pita" but of "Peter," so I chose "Mica" as a possible corruption of "Michael" with a bit of the same style of phonetic alteration. "Lee" seemed like it would stand the test of time and be plausible enough given the rest of the District 12 names.


	2. Full brain polish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It isn't that I think this scene would've actually happened, it's just that advicepeeta.com had a hilarious Finnick meme going for a little while, and I never quite got one of them out of my head. So I wrote a mini fic around it. Now I'm posting it as an homage to Sam Claflin saying he had such a memorable time giving Josh Hutcherson CPR.

I wake with a scream, already on my hands and knees, staring down between my fingers at the clenched sleeping bag as if I'm peering over a precipice. I realize that the sound that just left my mouth was Peeta's name. On either side of me Leeg 1 and Homes are looking around with sleep-bleared alarm. It's overcast and comparatively warm and nobody's sleeping in their tents.

Over on the other side of the heater, Peeta is up on one elbow. “What?” he bites out, as if I'm being completely unreasonable. 

“Oh you're there,” I hear myself blurt, “you're fine, never mind.” My voice sounds startled. I lie back down. Gale is staring at me over Leeg's shoulder.

“Where'd you think I was?” Peeta asks irritably.

“Gone over the edge,” I say. Then clarify, “With Cato.”

“Oh.” This, apparently, qualifies as reasonable. I can hear him settle back down. 

I don't get the impression the explanation has reassured anybody else. Well, who wants to think about the Cornucopia when they're trying to sleep? I try to calm my hammering heart. I can see Boggs and Finnick sitting on camp stools — they're on watch.

After a moment Peeta says, as if a dozen people weren't listening, “Is that still the worst night of your life?”

I'm not sure why that didn't come with a “real or not real” question out front. “I think there's more kinds of worst than I knew about then,” I say eventually. And, because I'm still hoping I can stop being despicable, I add, “You?”

He makes a slight rustle, maybe turning his head. “Not by a long shot.”

Everyone's holding their breaths like usual when they listen to us. Wanting out of this whole situation, I say, “You know what, forget this full body polish thing, they should have given us a full brain polish.”

After a tiny shocked silence, Finnick snorts. Then so does Peeta. 

“Sign me up,” Finnick chortles. 

Peeta laughs out loud and then claps his hands over his face. “I think that's what I've got,” he says through his hands. 

Finnick looks at him with surprise. Then with outright delight. “Shit! I take it back!”

This makes Peeta laugh harder. In a matter of seconds, the two of them get on some kind of runaway train and can't even look at each other. “You could wait — till they perfect their — their technique —” 

“Their technique is total crap!” 

I can't believe they're joking about this. Everyone is staring at them, although some people are starting to smile.

“It needs some refinement,” Peeta gasps through his hands. I haven't seen him laugh this hard for … I don't want to think how long.

“Refinement!” Finnick says in a Capitol accent. Peeta waves a hand in the way that we used to when making fun of Effie. Finnick looks ready to fall off his camp stool. 

“Soldiers,” Boggs tries to say. The corners of his mouth are twitching.

Finnick either doesn't hear or ignores him. “Just, honestly, was it that critical to forget about the mouth to mouth resuscitation?”

“Ha!” It's some little shout of startlement and hilarity. “You can't even prove that happened!”

“Ask them!” 

At the corner of my vision I see a couple people mouth “real.”

“No, you're completely shitting me.” Peeta is in stitches. He's still got his hands on his face as if he doesn't want to admit to any of this.

Finnick is hooting and shaking his head and leaning back so far he looks like he'll tip the stool over. “I don't always kiss teenage boys, but when I do, it's Peeta Mellark,” he announces, smirking. My jaw drops. I'm the only one who isn't laughing, although it sounds like shocked laughter for some of them.

“Does your wife know about this,” Peeta chokes out.

“My wife! I have one!” Finnick will forever be gleeful about the very idea.

Distant ovals of faces are turning toward our camp from other squads. “Boys, less volume,” Boggs says as if he's talking to his sons, and for some reason this works. Peeta seems to be wiping his eyes — I can't quite see his face in the low light. The giggling of the rest of the squad dies away and people lie back in their sleeping bags. Finnick continues snickering for a bit. “Needs some refinement,” I hear him say to himself appreciatively.

Maybe it's the evidence that we're all doing so well that makes them select the next day for the live-fire propo.


	3. The life of the mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Effie cultivates her new victors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catching Fire is on my mind these days, so I'll be posting a few little scenes from that timeframe.

Effie sits down with their principal and schoolteachers, of course, to get an idea of their talents. This is scheduled for the days immediately following their triumphant return to their home district, while the camera crews follow them up and down the stairs in their new homes and in and out of the struggling little shops where they can now afford to buy anything they like. The stylists and prep teams drop by their houses in the mornings and before any dinner events but otherwise keep to themselves on the train, as far as she is aware. They stick to their schedules. Haymitch, she loses track of, and has no real desire to determine his whereabouts. So that leaves Effie to carry on with business. 

More time in District Twelve than she ever wanted to spend, and in the peeling-paint badly lit school of all places. Chitchatting over terrible stale tea and — is this goat's milk? How earthy. They view the sugar cubes as a real luxury, which she figures out only after she's added a nice cascade of them to her second cup to mask the taste of everything else. She wonders whether the mayor's wife has decided to be more liberal with her sugar cubes or whether she just conceals her reaction more skillfully during their once-a-year pre-reaping luncheons.

In any case: Uneven students, the both of them. Miss Everdeen always kept to herself and kept her head down, probably bright, but dulled as most Seam children are by hunger and family hardship. Well, but all that is past now, Effie reassures them. And if it had never been that way at all, what would her good subjects have been? But they can't seem to think of any. Maybe math? Maybe geology? It's the only science taught in the district. She seemed better with the practical subjects. But then again, she played truant on the days they had field trips to the coal mines, so maybe she's not so practical after all. Effie tries to suppress her exasperation. Impossible girl, just absolutely impossible. The school's music classes are not continued past age nine or ten, so they have no idea whether Katniss is actually possessed of musical talent, as Peeta claims she is. Her singing voice while crying is no diamond in the rough.

And the youngest Mr. Mellark, definitely bright, does well on tests and recitations, but so inconsistent with homework that they aren't really sure if he has a best subject. They hint vaguely at family strife there too. (This benighted district. This is what she lives for — she can deliver them from this. She can give these children a few good days in their short lives. And now that she has victors — she can deliver them from this!) Peeta, though: smart, prone to distractions by his friends, takes notes that devolve into doodling, no stranger to the principal's office for talking back or showing up tardy. Popular among his peers, a team player on the wrestling squad. She hems and haws over all this and tries to line this up with what she's seen him do and makes the highly intuitive choice to ask for any handy examples of his drawings.

So one out of two isn't a failure, not at all, and in point of fact no escort has ever before been asked to identify talents for two victors at once, so she really must conclude that the day is a success. Effie leaves the crumbling concrete block of the school building with a victor's talent in hand, and that's precisely what she came here for. She gives two sets of the formal school withdrawal papers to the principal and explains how she should file them at the Justice Building.

She pities them, though. She understands that most inhabitants of the outlying districts simply have neither the capacity to become learned nor the inclination to do so — it isn't their fault, of course, it's just that their cultures don't value the life of the mind. History, literature, economics, the fine arts: these things aren't comprehensible to district people. But poor dears, what would they have enjoyed if they'd had the chance? She herself is free to take up this documentary on architecture in idle moments, and if only everyone were so lucky. 

She takes a personal interest in stocking the shelves of the lounge and television room in the Victory Tour train. It's an effort on her part that she knows they can't appreciate, and she does try to warn herself about this and come to terms with it, during her hours of careful combing through the approved lists for the outer districts. She brings a few non-approved items to the review board that she thinks would be of interest to her victors without being too challenging to their minds, and some get through and some don't. 

During the Victory Tour, they are so clearly still the outclassed rural children that they were when she first met them. It warms her heart and saddens her at the same time. They spend so much time with Haymitch, clearly desperate for guidance on how to navigate this new world from someone who's walked the same path. He's a better mentor than she used to think. They do very well during the public events, building up enthusiasm as they go, losing sleep from working so hard, making her proud. 

She would love to talk with them more, but they need so much quiet time between events for recovery and reflection. Effie tries her best to accept this and leave them alone, she really does. So when she sees Peeta sprawled on the sofa watching a restaurant show from the Capitol that she selected for him from the depths of the approved list, and when she glances at Katniss curled up in a window seat and realizes that what's in her lap is an illustrated guide to butterflies that she had to get specially approved, Effie must be content knowing that she has contributed as much as she can to their well-being and social development as her victors.


	4. Couldn't keep the originals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeta learns something about what you leave in the Capitol during a Victory Tour.

Maybe they should have thought about this a little harder, this business of sharing a bed now that they're engaged. But he's not sure how they could have really thought it through without also talking about it, and right at the moment, talking feels more like the source of the discomfort. So he just kind of gets dressed as though nothing were going on and says, “See you later,” and goes back to his own compartment. Before too long, though, they're going to have to put words to what exactly this sham will entail.

Showered and in clothes that haven't been subjected to that feast, he feels more normal. But when's the last time he slept without nightmares? This morning he feels almost incomplete without them. He wanders down to the compartment that holds his nightmarish paintings.

They're not in there anymore. He doesn't have the wrong compartment either — there are empty easels in the corner. Halfway up the train, he runs into Effie.

“Of course they're gone,” she tells him. “The auction took nearly as long as the feast! They were very much in demand!”

He feels like he's running to catch up. “My paintings were auctioned?”

“Well, what market would there have been for them in District Twelve? It's much better this way, that victors' talents receive the most cultured appreciation possible. Your works are considered quite sophisticated, especially from such a rustic, unpracticed origin!”

He swallows the comment he'd like to make, because that would be his mother talking. Effie stands there completely convinced she's being complimentary. She's not going to get the gratitude she wants from him, but — “Does that mean Katniss's outfits sold too?”

“We didn't even put them up, poor dear, she can work on them a little longer. The design houses saw some promise, of course.”

“Of course,” he repeats, still trying to get ahold of why this seems so awful. They were his paintings. They were his. “You don't happen to know which ones made the auction take so long, do you?”

“Oh, the ones of Katniss, mostly. Well, that doesn't narrow it down much, does it? But naturally people want whatever they can get of a victor,” and at that her voice falters and something crosses her face that scares him, even though it's gone so fast he can't interpret it. “It's fortunate each of you can … produce something. It's not every victor who has a properly marketable talent, either. And I'm so pleased you took my advice and signed them; there _will_ be imitators, you know.” She's collecting herself as she goes along.

Katniss up in the tree, Katniss by the stream, Katniss fussing over their supplies. Gone for somebody else to think they understand. He's tempted to paint these memories again. But maybe he shouldn't replace the originals. Maybe he couldn't keep those either.

“Katniss, of course. Something else?” He wonders how long he's going to dig himself further into this pit.

Effie clears her throat, still not quite at equilibrium. “There was a kill, from your perspective, with just the edge of the boy's face, and the knife. That one was bid up for hours.”


	5. Lay this kid down in the dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haymitch at the 75th reaping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of meant to be posting more often than this. Here are a few in a row to make up for it. About this one: like some other folks, I think letting Peeta volunteer would have been deeply painful to Haymitch. Not just because Haymitch thinks the world of Peeta, but also because of the moral offense, the dirty-hands element to it. So, here's a quick thing about that.

Turns out it's startling to hear your name read even when it's a fifty-fifty chance. He reaches for the rope and lifts it to go under, looking at the expression on the girl's face, but there was a split second of delay first as his gut recoiled. And that gives the boy enough time to swallow hard and Haymitch hasn't actually gotten away when Peeta calls out clearly, “I volunteer as tribute.”

He turns to the boy, on some dumb impulse to block his way. He could stop him — he's still quick enough. He's meaner. He can renege on whatever a silver-tongued kid got an old drunk to agree to. He could lay this kid down in the dirt and the Games would still go on. But all he gets for that is the boy's hand on his shoulder, as if to comfort _him_ , some unreadable look as their eyes meet briefly, and then the boy is under the rope and gone.

He's left facing the crowd, head down. Let them look, let the cameras try to zoom in on him, let them see whatever's on his face and assume he's wishing he had a flask in his pocket. Just as long as the girl and boy don't see. You can say that this is what those stupid children asked for. That this is for the best overall, that it's got the highest percentage chance, that it's the only way the design can proceed. 

It's all true. But so is this, and Haymitch knows it: He's committed a sin.


	6. The descent into the earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gale after the 74th reaping.

Eighteen and a day: a reaping day, that is. When most people consider their lives to begin. When you'll never darken the school's doors again and you hope that wages adequately take the place of tesserae. When you can take action on all those stupid fantasies you've been saving up through your adolescent years — ask the girl, kiss the boy, talk back to your father, let yourself become a mother. That's what most people can finally do after they're eighteen and a day, and of course if they're not the ones on the train.

Gale knows that your life doesn't begin that day. All that's different is you can cross off the list one potential way you will die.

All the same, he's not immune to dreaming. He had some ideas.

Somehow he didn't look closely at the possibility that your ideas might not work out even if you're not the one on the train.

The day after reaping day is his first day in the mines and he seems to be the only rookie discovering that this day is in fact the end of your life. The descent into the earth lasts for eternity.


	7. He sees traps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale of the 74th Games, as viewed from back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The books never cover what it was like for the people of District Twelve to watch the finale — to have had such a rare hope raised and then dashed and then answered. If you were socialized to watch and accept this, though, and so beaten down that silence at the reaping counted as a protest ... it seemed to me that the reaction would have been weirdly muted. Anyway, I wanted to write about it to explore it a little more, and it seemed like Gale was a suitable person to tell it. He gets a little poetical when I write him and I don't know why, but there you have it.

He sees traps. It's what he does. He should have seen this one sooner. But he doesn't figure it out until the District Two boy's cannon is followed by silence, when there should have been trumpets.

(He hates himself for watching her scream through the night, but what was he supposed to do — turn his face away from a friend in distress? He knows none of them should watch, that to watch is to submit which is to acquiesce. But for the first time, he has experienced how impossible it is to turn away. And so he has joined in her exploitation.)

He must be the first person on earth who sees it, other than those who so carefully set it. He can tell that nobody else in the square does. They are trembling on the edge of their seats, their eyes starting to reanimate after the gruesome night, gripping each other's hands. Now that the tributes from District Twelve are the only ones left in the arena, it is actually possible to let yourself believe.

It would be asking too much to have expected Katniss to see it. Out of her mind with horror, exhausted, her trousers soaked in the baker's son's blood because she's kept his tourniqueted leg propped up on her hip all night — no, he can't blame her for not recognizing it, even when she's so close as to wonder blearily whether they're supposed to move away from the last body.

And Peeta Mellark is no fool, he has to admit — right at the moment he's pretty sure the kid not only saved Katniss's life but also kept her from going mad during the night, so it's hard to hate him, though Gale does anyway — but he has no native gift for the mechanisms of a death trap, so it would be on her to notice. The two of them slide off the blood-slicked Cornucopia and hobble compliantly down toward the water.

There should be cursing or yelling or something in his mind but all he's got is a great empty echoing rage. Gale doesn't know how it'll happen, but it'll start unfolding soon. “Separate the families,” he hears himself blurt.

His mother looks at him, not comprehending. They're here on a bench in the square, the younger boys on either side of them, Posy in Gale's lap where he's been sometimes covering her eyes, though he probably should have been covering her ears. She's looking up at him too.

He nods directly in front of them, where Prim Everdeen and her mother are so tightly wrapped up against each other that a quick glance might not see two people there. Next to them on the bench are the baker, his wife, and the two older sons. Gale has hardly seen them exchange words throughout the night. But he supposes there's no way they could have seen this out separately, not as long as they were led to believe both of their kids could win.

“We need to separate the families,” he murmurs again as he scoots Posy to Vick's lap, and because he can see his mother wants to hope, he adds, “Two victors, it might be a trick.”

His mother looks at Katniss and Peeta leaning against each other on the screen, swallows hard, and looks around at the crowd. Trembling, hopeful, all faces lifted to the screens with wide eyes in the early morning light. And the Peacekeepers at the perimeter, splitting their gazes between the screens and the crowd.

Gale lets her make the first move. She hardly has to move, just goes and gently adds her arms to the knot of Katniss's family and murmurs their names. It could be in celebration or reassurance. Gale gets to his feet, eyes on the screen, and goes to stand with his mother — but he's a little behind the baker too. The man doesn't even notice him.

The announcement echoes from the speakers.

Katniss and Peeta just kind of look at each other.

The bubble of cautious joy over the crowd collapses. The people of District Twelve are strangely quiet as it unfolds, just a wail or a gasp here or there. 

The weapons — out then gone.

Katniss's mother and sister are crumpling.

The baker is on his feet. So are his sons. Gale steps over the bench to get between them and the Everdeens.

The two kids' words tumble over each other, protesting and pleading and then they're actually shoving at each other a bit and the entire district is on its feet or cowering because, please, no, not this, and the kids are shouting desperately at each other and the noise of the crowd is spiraling up into something that could be dangerous if it dared and for a second, as Katniss's eyes go blank, it actually looks like Peeta has talked her into it. And Gale is trying to be ready, because he doesn't yet know how the big sturdy brothers or the violent mother or the grieving father will react and he has people to protect, even as the trap closes around them all.

The berries.

Oh Katniss, oh Katniss, they've underestimated you. We all have.

He saw the trap, but not the way out.

Screams tear from the families as their children share the berries between their hands.

The entire district is doubled over and screaming.

The useless reach to stop their hands as they tilt the berries into their mouths.

When the trumpets blast, no one even understands the sound for a moment. Just that Katniss and Peeta are spitting out the berries and splashing into the water and practically shaking each other. Then, finally, the words over the trumpets sink in.

As if they are tied to their tributes' movements, half the district is now on their knees. They're clutching each other, laughing and crying and cheering. The Mellarks and the Everdeens are gasping, choking, not even seeming to know where they are. People are starting to come for them to congratulate them, climbing over benches, and Gale presses closer to the Everdeens so that nobody will squish Prim.

He looks back up at the screens. He can hear the victory music cranked up above the crowd, and hovercraft have appeared, but Katniss and Peeta are not looking up in relief or anticipation, even though they did earlier, when they were on top of the Cornucopia. They're kneeling amid the spreading blood in the water, holding onto each other, rocking a little, as if this is still the only ticket to survival.

Gale looks back down at the blond heads, the backs shaking with sobs, the pressing friendly hands. Just come home, he thinks.


	8. Eroding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeta finds solace, isolation, and the beginnings of a plan in the evening after the Quarter Quell is announced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write something to do with Peeta's friends. He was a popular kid, according to Katniss, and I wanted to explore what happened there — how the Games divided him from them and made the comfort that they must have been to him, earlier in his life, become insufficient.

Ripper, he's thinking, as he pounds down Haymitch's steps. This has to stop. She wouldn't be at the Hob at this hour, but someone can tell me where she lives. I left the lights on. Screw it. He passes his own house without going in. 

Prim calls to him from her porch before he even sees her standing there. “Where did Katniss go?” Her voice is shaking.

“I'll send her back to you,” he says without thinking. May she never lose her sister.

“Did you see where she went?” She's crying and looking bewildered.

He realizes as he comes toward the porch that they're talking about two different things. Keep it together, he tells himself. There are sobs coming from inside the house too. Prim looks toward the door. “I haven't seen her yet,” he tells Prim, “but I'll look for her.”

Prim gives a nod and a choking sound and goes back in to her mother.

If she isn't at her place or his or Haymitch's, well, that narrows it down. And he's heading for the Seam anyway.

In the empty part of the road between the Victor's Village and town, alone under the stars, he can smell the mud and rocks holding him against the earth, in his shallow grave by the stream. He looks at the moon's position and can hear Cato screaming out his life. He can feel the join of his artificial leg with each step. How can I do this, he thinks, how can I possibly do this?

He's moving quickly through town, past the shuttered shops, keeping his head down and hoping his father isn't watching for him, when somebody hisses from an upstairs window. He considers not looking up, but a girl's voice says his name. It's Delly leaning out the window, gesturing at him. 

He doesn't know why he stops. Maybe because he doesn't really want to know where Katniss is right now if not with him. He goes to the door and Delly pulls her head back in and closes the window.

Upstairs is the bedroom that the cobbler's family isn't big enough to need, currently a second TV room where Delly's allowed to have people over. She must have held a bit of a party around the mandatory programming. The television is off now, but two dozen kids are still grouped like they're watching it. Pitchers and cups around the room, a few bottles. No one's eating the food anymore. They're silent.

“Peeta,” Delly says again, but then what does anybody say? He's known everyone here his entire life. The ones who have their hands over their mouths, what would they say if their mouths weren't blocked? The ones who can't meet his eyes, what are they afraid to look at?

“If we did it once, we can do it again,” he says, surprising even himself. “I'm going to get her out alive.”

They're looking at him now. His classmates and kids from a year or two above and below. Wrestling teammates. Four of the five girls he's ever kissed. Nearly all of the boys he's gotten in fistfights with, excluding his brothers, obviously. Mostly merchant, a few Seam. His friends, whom the months since the arena have been slowly but steadily eroding from his life. 

He won't have to mentor any of them. He can be certain of this now. The relief hits him so hard he feels woozy.

The next second he feels guilty, because what kind of coward is he? But truth be told he isn't certain he could survive mentoring. The nearest people are reaching for him, scared and sorry and still his friends, probably thinking that what just made him stumble and lean on the doorframe was fear for his life. He straightens back up. “Sorry. I'm fine. I am.” How can I do this?

They're looking at him like he's off his rocker. He said that last bit out loud. 

And suddenly the words come together. 

“Seriously, how can I do this? Because half of you all wanted to talk to me about it afterwards. What we could have done better. Where we got lucky. Stuff you saw in the live broadcast that didn't get into the recap, so I didn't see it. So will you help me out, since we have time to plan? She's going in again, so what would you say she has to train up in to come home again?”

His eyes land on Madge, sitting in a corner being shy, because he knows that of all of them she's the only one that's Katniss's friend too. And hope is appearing on her face. 

Nobody's saying anything, though. “Come on, guys.”

“But Peeta,” Rosalie says, fearfully, “you'll be in again too.”

Sometimes they are so blind. This is just a replay of what was supposed to happen last year, if only the Gamemakers hadn't gotten so clever. This is a decision he already made. “Then it won't be any of you, will it? Think about that.” 

There's sort of a general letting go of held breaths. 

“Come on, guys, help me out here. Help me get her home.”

Jem empties the ends of a couple of pitchers of beer into a cup and hands it to him. He'd rather have a bottle than finish the dregs of the homebrew, but he's not going to ask for their expensive stuff. He takes a swallow, since the cup is too full, and waits for them.

Jasper clears his throat. “Well — she's pretty damn good already, you know.” 

“But if she was a little better at the hand-to-hand stuff, I thought last year,” Cricket offers hesitantly. “You're good at it, so you could work on that with her.”

“That's about all I've got on her,” Peeta says, and grins, just to get a couple people to crack a smile or a huff of laughter in response. And they do, and that's enough to start to challenge the feeling of dread in the room with the idea that they might be able to stand up to this. 

Harell says, “Maybe strength training or something? She's kind of tiny.” Compared to Harell, everybody is tiny.

“The interviews,” Tildy starts but then says, “Well, she's better at them now, and personally I think they'd be awfully hard, so never mind.”

“What about all the different weapons, can you train with those?”

“Does anybody have paper?” Peeta says. He can tell he's going to lose track of all these in a moment. Madge hesitantly extends the piece of paper she's been holding, and out of habit he flips it to see if there's anything on the other side. 

_Lacy with roses_ , followed by five tally marks. _Diamonds all over_ , seven tallies. _Pearls and long sleeves_ , six tallies. _Shiny plus fake tattoos_ , two tallies. _Poofy huge skirt_ , two tallies. _Colorful embroidery_ , three tallies. 

He looks up.

The room has gone silent again.

“We thought we'd just have our own vote,” Madge murmurs, looking like she might die of guilt.

“I could go find a notebook,” Delly whispers.

He takes a couple of steps into the center of the room so that he can set the cup down on the coffee table. It's threatening to spill. Then he folds the piece of paper in half, hiding the wedding dresses, and takes the pencil from Madge's fingers. “Hand-to-hand,” he says out loud as he writes, and his voice comes out steady. “Strength. Other weapons. Interviews.” And this makes him feel better, because this list is a hell of a lot more suited to Katniss.

He looks around expectantly. “Okay. What next?” 

They're comparing memories of past arenas in the hopes of getting some ideas when Delly says, “Oh, more help,” and opens the window to hiss at somebody again. The person that she holds the door open for is Gale Hawthorne.

He's frowning at Delly as he comes in, and says, “What?” Then his eyes scan the room, not seeming to know most of them, and land on Peeta.

The only thing to really hope for at this point is that there is even a bit of ambiguity about why they're looking at each other with barely-veiled anger. Peeta just waits. The conversation behind him drifts to a halt.

“She showed back up,” Gale says to him finally. Accusingly. “Drunk off her ass. Came from Haymitch's but looked like she fell in a hole on the way.”

So she wasn't with Gale? But this makes no sense. Peeta's house is between theirs and he never saw her go by. “Are you kidding me? She can't get through a glass of wine.” 

Gale's eyebrows go up slightly and Peeta knows the cup of beer in his hand isn't lost on him. “She was carrying half a bottle of white liquor. Maybe your mentor drank the other half.”

Peeta sits back. He did need to ask somebody this question, after all. “Where's Ripper live, do you know?”

Gale blinks. “Ore street, south side. The one with glass wind chimes out front. Why?”

“I'm going to pay her off, so I'll make it for the both of them. Lost sales now till reaping day.”

Somebody laughs nervously. Gale says, “She'll counter with triple.”

“Not a problem,” he says, because it isn't.

Delly jumps in, maybe having been waiting this whole time to answer Gale's question. “We're thinking of ways Katniss can train up, so that, you know, so that … because Peeta says they can pull it off again. You should help, because you're her friend.”

She's so optimistic and inviting that Zeke and Robin start reading off the list, but after a moment Gale looks back at Peeta. When they reach the end he says, “Just Katniss, training up?”

This is why she likes him. Just as she does, he sees things that other people don't notice. He understands the detail that lets him win. 

Peeta says, “The rule change was temporary. Wasn't even real.”

“I know,” Gale tells him, serious through the suddenly-quizzical noises of the others.

“Wait, you mean, you mean, you can't both …?” says Jules.

“Nope,” says Peeta. Still looking at Gale. You better deserve her, you bastard.

This is exactly what happened around him in the section for the sixteen-year-olds last summer. The shrinking away, the silence, the horrified glances. He is dead, right here among them, just with a timing delay, and all they can do is hope to avoid getting caught too.

Then Hetty seems to give herself a shake and says, “But Peeta, they might draw Haymitch, of course. So it might not be you at all!” 

Apparently volunteering is still totally outside their frame of reference, just a weird thing only Katniss Everdeen does. He takes a swallow of beer, clears his throat, and says, “Haymitch has been a mentor for twenty-four years. I've never done it, don't know how. But I did okay in the arena.” 

He knows better than to say “I won.” He couldn't have, on his own. But he did okay. 

“But Effie Trinket might draw Haymitch,” she persists. He never much liked Hetty.

“In which case I'll volunteer.”

They're processing this at totally different rates. Some have their mouths open in shock, or are staring at him with watery eyes. Some are still just frowning. Madge is looking like she always knew. 

Apple spits out, “What the hell do you owe Haymitch Abernathy?”

Coolly, Peeta says, “Nothing. He owes me, actually.”

This is, possibly, the best part about being a victor. He can just refuse to explain himself. These kids he's known all his life are looking at him like they don't know him. And the thing is, when it comes to this, they don't.

“How is she worth it, man?” Mark says, almost in a whisper. As if he doesn't even want to know. And he's a great guy, the sort who'd give you the shirt off his back.

“Either you get it or you don't,” Peeta says shortly. Because he's never talked about Katniss with them, not about the girl herself, and he isn't about to start. Because he can feel the thing in him that knows how to kill and doesn't want to die trembling beneath the surface. 

His eyes track to Gale, which if he stopped to think about it would just be awkward at this juncture, but in the moment it's actually kind of comforting to have somebody here who gets what he's doing. Gale is staring at him, evaluating. He looks out the window at the dark town. “This is fucked up,” he says under his breath.

“Yes it is.” Peeta pulls the ice bin from under the table and says “Incoming” before lobbing a bottle. Gale catches it without a fumble and puts his shirttail over his hand to twist off the top. He looks out the window again, then at a couple of the older Seam kids. Peeta isn't sure what's getting communicated there. But the stares that were going back and forth between the supposed fiance and the supposed cousin seem to be diverted, and a couple of side conversations are starting up. The three couples in the room are leaning against each other, and they and a few of the others look upset. Peeta nudges the remaining snacks toward them. 

He's watching Noal add, uselessly, _Consider alliances?_ to the list when Gale turns back and says, “If they're targeting her, it won't be a forest, at least not a kind of forest she knows. If they're targeting you, I'd guess you'll have to run.”

Now everybody's looking at Gale. Shut up, Peeta thinks wildly, you can't say that kind of stuff. Even in the cobbler's spare TV room. “What?”

Gale shrugs. “I mean, I'm assuming. But can you run?”

He's given it a try. His stride is still uneven. “Yes.”

Gale shakes his head, with a slightly different expression. “You might be able to pull this off. So why's that list just for her?”

They all look at the list that starts with _Hand-to-hand_.

“Didn't think about it,” Peeta finally says.

“You could use a distance weapon,” Gale tells him.

Peeta looks back at the list. He draws a neat line down the middle of the page, puts a K above the left and a P on the right, and writes, _Distance weapon_. 

“And to walk quieter in the woods.” It's Joss who says this. He must remember how Katniss glared and made him walk barefoot. _Stealth_ , Peeta writes.

Bea, who tells it like it is, says, “Peeta, you better just hope it isn't woods, because you totally sucked at that.” 

Peeta snorts. “It's fucking impossible, you try it sometime.”

Gale says, half smiling, “You already have a fucking impossible thing on that list. How's she going to learn hand fighting? She hates people touching her.” 

There are a couple of baffled gestures toward Peeta, who they're used to seeing on TV in rather a lot of physical contact with her, and then some “ooo” noises, because they really need to laugh about something right now. Half the room dissolves into giggles about wrestling lessons. Peeta makes himself smile and adds _First aid_ and _Edible things_ to the list on his own, which gets another round of teasing. They'll get almost a balanced set of lists, really, with his just a bit longer. And she isn't going to like any of this. But at least it'll be a way forward. It'll help him leave his life behind. 

Once the handful of miners in the room — including Gale, whom Peeta is actually beginning to think of as an ally — have left to get some sleep before their shift, the group breaks up quickly. Peeta makes sure he leaves fast, and he heads toward the Seam as if he really will go see Ripper at this hour, since it's only merchant kids now and no one is going that way. When he doubles back, the mercantile quarter is deserted. All the lights are out in the bakery.

Their voices, their expressions, their hands against his shoulders and arms that he struggled not to shrug off as they said goodnight, all of that is melting away. All that's real is the paper folded up in his pocket and the twin lists it holds.

In that same awful empty stretch of road, he hears again, “How is she worth it?” And all he can answer is, She is. He still doesn't want to live in a world without her in it. Her capability and her reserve and her inadvertent humor and, still so foreign to him, her stony determination to do right by the people she loves.

In the way she's been with him this winter, he'd let himself see hints that he could someday be among them. But it'll be best if he assumes that was wishful thinking.

The only lights still on in the Victor's Village are in his house. The empty house. Home is where the light is left on for you. At some point, to make it easier on whoever comes in after, he should pack up his belongings. His father will take the baking things. He supposes that the paintings will sell. 

He goes through his house and turns the lights off and feels the crumbling begin. Once, he tells himself, you only get to do this once. Funny that there are no tears — he cried when his name was drawn last year because, let's be honest, he was terrified. He feels so much older now as he buries his face in a pillow and screams and screams and screams.


	9. Loops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeta's response to the spoiled food that arrived on Parcel Day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katniss steamrolls through a lot of the story of that post-Victory Tour winter, and so the miserable event of the Parcel Day food arriving spoiled and filthy gets just one sentence. There's no mention of Peeta knowing about it, but I figure he would, so I wanted to write something about how he might react and how district people most likely have no recourse for anything.

Katniss seethes at the expanse of Parcel Day crates and then begins tearing into them, one after the other, not very systematically, as if finding one unfouled one will somehow salvage the whole lot. He leaves her to it, in part because, let's face it, he doesn't have a lot of firsthand knowledge of tessera-grade grain and oil. And for the most part, that's all Parcel Day is. The reward for having a victor is just more tesserae.

He could go home, but he only needs a telephone, not privacy, and he doesn't want to be that far away from her in case she finds — he's not sure what. So instead he goes to the stationmaster's office and puts a coin on the counter and asks, “Can I make a phone call?”

Effie Trinket and Portia are the only people outside the district whose phone numbers he has, so he can remember both numbers. Effie answers on the first ring and sounds thrilled to hear from him, and he makes small talk for a couple of minutes before losing patience and saying, “Effie, I'm calling because we have a bit of a problem here, and I knew that if anybody could figure out the right people to talk to to straighten this out, it'd be you.”

Once he explains, she sounds a little bewildered, or reluctant. But she gives him a couple of names and numbers to try. So he writes those out on a sketchpad from his pocket and calls them, and introduces himself — “Yes, the victor. No, I know, it's really exciting. Yes, we're really happy.” Once they get over the surprise, they ask cheerily what they can help him with. But then they just talk about other people who make decisions, or handle some other part of the supply chain. 

The coins stack up on the counter.

“I understand that Parcel Days get handled by a lot of people, so tell me about your part of the process.”

“So it isn't ever inspected before it gets put on the train?”

“Okay, well, can I talk to the office in District Nine?”

He empties his pocket of coins and is patting around his jacket when the stationmaster, whom he'd pretty much forgotten was there, says, “I'll just tally up any others and put them on credit, son.” 

He glances up and nods to say thanks and picks up the phone again. While listening to the ring, he looks over his shoulder at Katniss and a few other people out in the middle of the unloading platform. There are also people here hanging around the office for some reason.

“Hi, my name is Peeta Mellark, and I'm calling because —” He has to hold the phone away from his ear as a young woman shrieks. She giggles through the whole phone call. He butters her up as much as an engaged guy possibly could, but all he gets is an extra-long list of new numbers to call.

“You sound surprised that I'd take an interest in this, but it doesn't seem crazy to me to look out for the welfare of my district. Right, winning is for the honor of it, but it's the middle of winter so let's be practical.”

“Listen, three different people have suggested that I talk to you, which makes me think you can do a little more than tell me to talk to somebody else.”

He studies the latest batch of other numbers to call and realizes he's tried them all before. One of them is Effie Trinket's number. He draws careful arrows showing how the conversation goes in loops. “You cocksuckers,” he says to the page.

A startled movement catches his eye, and he looks up to find that a woman in the doorway has just covered her five-year-old's ears. What the hell are these people standing here for? “Sorry, do you need the phone?”

They shake their heads. He steps away from it anyway; it's not like there's anything left to do at this point.

The stationmaster offers him a scrap of paper with a lot of tallies, then says as if he can't help it, “Where'd you learn to do that?”

“Do what?”

A helpless shrug. “ _Talk_ like that.”

Peeta shrugs back at him. “Must have been here.” 

Then he leaves. It's gotten dark. The unloading platform is deserted now, the boxes all torn open.

He hears, a few years later, that the tale of him smooth-talking his way through half the Capitol was the best story in the district for a week, and that there was some speculation at that time that he was the one who'd never been in love in the first place, that he'd gotten his life spared by means of a really great performance. Minority opinion, but all the same. What he himself thinks, later, is that he probably didn't do nothing: he probably made things worse. Made the district look restless. Indicated that District Twelve might try to use the little bit of fame it now held. Definitely had somebody who'd ask unwelcome questions. In the Capitol, when he tries to blink the grogginess and pain out of his eyes enough to focus on the script they've handed him, he finds that it asks a lot of questions.


	10. Let the baby take the brunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short piece about Mellark family dynamics and Peeta's brother who may or may not have been eligible to volunteer for him.

Nobody asks Mica whether he thought about volunteering for Peeta. It isn't like he wants to have to answer. It just kills him that nobody asks, because he really would like to stop wondering whether they think it's a) because he flat-out never would, or b) because who the hell volunteers except Career districts, or c) because people have finally remembered that he's three years older than Peeta even though he's only two years ahead of him in school. 

Mica was born two days before reaping day. It was awful, though he never dared admit it to anybody, to be just barely twelve years old and have his name in the bowl. It's why he took up wrestling, so that he could at least have a somewhat useful skill, just in case. He never asked Peeta if that had anything to do with why he took up wrestling too. Fucking Peeta, tagging around after him for all those years, and then nearly showing him up in the tournament this past year. 

He's why Mica got held back a year, too, sort of. It was a bad year, his first year in school, when Lee was old enough to start being a serious bastard, sneaky cruel almost all the time but a brown-noser in front of anybody with authority. Two-faced. Maybe the whole family is two-faced. Anyway, Mica had Lee on the one hand, and the constant refrain of “Why can't you be smart and well-behaved like Lee?” And on the other hand, he had Peeta, two years old, a rambunctious loud critter that for some reason Mica was supposed to keep in line even though he himself was only five and wanted to be playing. They were all driving their mother around the bend and it got to be a particularly bad year. He could never figure out whether he felt better when he let the baby take the brunt of it, because after all that's almost always whose fault it was, or whether it was better to try to take the blame, because Peeta was awfully little, and fun a lot of the time. But home was not good, and it was hard to concentrate on behaving at school, let alone learning. In the end they made Mica do the first year of lessons over again.

So he was eighteen and a day last year, but still in school so it didn't get celebrated. His dad and Peeta remembered. Well, Lee remembered, but gave him shit about it for being held back. This year he's nineteen and out of the reaping while the rest of his class is on their last one. It isn't anybody in his class, though. It's a small Seam girl and Peeta. 

Peeta. 

Probably his friends are celebrating, now that they've all made it out. Mica doesn't know for sure. His brain doesn't really hold onto anything for days after he says goodbye to his little brother.


	11. Already happening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the minutes after Peeta's on-air warning to District Thirteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This popped into my head the other day. Of course, I meant to be writing for Prompts in Panem, but whatever. 
> 
> I'm on the tumblr train now (on the caboose, at this point): keeptheearthbelowff. Come say hi if you like!

Snow exits the elevator and follows the blood trail. When he appears in the doorway, Peeta looks up briefly and then doubles around the boot that was already on a trajectory into his belly. He sprawls on the floor and doesn't bother trying to stifle a yell. 

“Stand him up,” Snow orders, and the Peacekeepers haul Peeta to his feet and start fastening him to the beam in the middle of the room. He struggles, tearing the interview clothes, and one of the guards grabs him by the hair and slams his head into the beam. He can't clear the dizziness before they've finished securing him. 

When he looks up in Snow's direction, blood rolls from his scalp down the side of his face. But crazy laughter is coming out of his throat. He half-shouts, “You don't get it, do you? You give me a microphone — you put me in front of anybody at all — and I'll say anything I can get away with.”

Snow backhands him across the face. Then nods to the guards. One exits the room. The other takes Snow's place and raises his armored fists. 

He's done in the few moments it takes for Snow to wipe the blood from his glove and for the other guard to return. New lines of blood drain from Peeta's lip and nose, joining the spray that already came up from his lungs or stomach up onstage. His cheekbone is raw and the flesh around one eye is already swelling.

Peeta tests his jaw and touches his tongue to to his lip. He's snickering mirthlessly to himself. “Guess I'm not going back on TV now.”

“You're very perceptive, Mr. Mellark,” Snow tells him calmly. “Your face is no longer an asset to this nation. Intact or not.”

Peeta's pulse is jumping wildly in his throat. “You still don't get it. You can't do _anything_ to make me play your game.” In the past few days he has stopped being so careful about the appearance and repercussions of his actions. 

Snow puts on a thoughtful look. “Our leverage, I admit, has declined. Your family, dead. Your district, burnt to ashes. Your erstwhile girl, in the arms of another man. Your allies here, already slated for execution. The young ladies next door — well, you never were in a position to do much for them, were you?” 

Johanna Mason and Annie Cresta have been wailing during this whole interview. The sound is a bit muffled down the hallway, and it's background noise, by now.

“So, Mr. Mellark,” Snow continues, “you might consider what use we possibly have for you at all, except as an example.”

The Peacekeeper whose knuckles aren't bloody now approaches Peeta with the contraption he'd retrieved earlier. Peeta, again, struggles automatically — but guards in this prison have extensive experience with this process, and in a matter of moments, Peeta's head is wrenched back against the beam and caged in place, his neck exposed and jaw pulled wide. A clamp holds his tongue out. Little whimpers escape along with his breath, and his pulse is much, much faster.

Snow approaches and inspects Peeta's expression. There's no surprise in it. He accepts a scalpel from the guard and taps it against the side of the tongue as though he's testing its blade. The pain causes Peeta's pupils to contract and dilate again. Fear, yes, and pain, yes, but no pleading, no real cringing — he's learned well to deal with terror via anticipation. What he has arranged in his expression is a sort of furious, knowing resignation.

Snow chuckles. He lowers the scalpel and uses it to lift Peeta's sleeve, high enough to see the marks in the crook of his arm. Then he steps back. “Examples are useful, Mr. Mellark. But when they send unique messages — ah, they're satisfying. Take this away.” 

The guard comes forward and unlocks the clamp and cage. Peeta's jaw pops as he tries to close his mouth. His eyes don't seem focused. 

There's a tap at the door, and the other Peacekeeper opens it a crack. “An update on the launch, sir, as requested.”

“In a moment,” Snow tells the aide, and the door closes again. 

Snow approaches Peeta and seizes his chin. Peeta gasps but meets his eyes. The air between them smells like blood.

“You ushered yourself offstage with impeccable timing, Mr. Mellark. You do not know what is already happening to you. But I think you'd be impressed with what we can make you do. You will be immensely useful.” He smiles slowly. “We won't speak again, of course. So it is with the utmost sincerity that I salute your courage and your sacrifice. Farewell.”


	12. All the time in the world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Francis Lawrence said last fall that Mockingjay 2 will end with “a very small, minimal scene of Katniss hunting” … but that doesn't have to mean it'll be three seconds of Katniss standing alone in the woods shooting an arrow, right? I had a little fuller idea in my head of what that might mean, especially if that's the only epilogue we get. I did try to narrate this pair of scenes from a viewer's perspective and restrict information to only what would be onscreen. Bit of an awkward experiment, I thought, but let me know what you think. I'm also on tumblr at keeptheearthbelowff if you want to say hi.

Peeta nuzzles into her hair and kisses her cheek. Katniss wakes, blinking at him. 

“Almost dawn. Thought you'd want to get going,” he murmurs. 

She looks around the dim room. “What? … Oh. Right.” She lifts her head from the pillow, then turns back to him, still bleary. “Aren't you getting up?” 

“It's Sunday. Bakery's closed,” he replies. “I might go back to sleep.”

She gives a little moan and curls back into him. “I could stay in bed. With you.” 

He smiles; they kiss, comfortably, as if they have all the time in the world. 

After a moment, he says, “She'd be disappointed if you don't go.”

She nods and kisses him lightly. “So would I. Back for lunch, though.”

His eyes follow her, a look of mingled contentment and desire on his face, as she gets out of bed and her footsteps cross the room. 

Dappled daylight in the forest. Behind overhanging leaves, Katniss draws an arrow and passes it to a much smaller hand. “Remember the index feather,” she says quietly.

The tiny girl beside her adjusts the arrow before nocking it to her bowstring. It's a small bow and a short arrow. The girl tucks her dark hair behind her ear, rises to her knees behind the screen of leaves, and draws the bow. Katniss watches her. Both their faces are intent. The girl breathes out and releases the arrow. As a cacophony of wings explodes and escapes into the distance, her shoulders slump in disappointment.

“That's okay,” Katniss says softly, “there'll be more.” When the girl just scowls, she adds, “You've done well today. I can tell you're working hard.” 

The girl looks back up, her expression easing. “Thanks Mama.”

Katniss smiles. “Want to call it a day? Go have something to eat with your dad?”

The girl nods and hops to her feet. Katniss rises more slowly. Her jacket falls open around her pregnant belly as she stands, and she smooths her hand over the curve. 

The girl tugs on the corner of the game bag and looks up hopefully. Katniss looks down. “Want to carry our squirrels?” The girl holds out her hands, and Katniss transfers the game bag to her little shoulders and helps her shorten the strap. 

She takes the girl's hand and carries her bow in the other. They collect the spent arrow and walk away together through the sunlit forest.


	13. A zoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haymitch gets District Thirteen to try letting Peeta out of the psych ward and into a kitchen.

You would think a corridor leading to the kitchens would be nicer than other corridors, just due to the smells, but damn it all, this food in Thirteen is shit. Haymitch did not suspect he'd been spoiled about food — it wasn't like he ate Capitol food more than once a year. Ever since they let him out of detox, he's occasionally glanced around the dining hall, checking the faces of fellow refugees as they eat, but somehow they don't seem disgusted. Maybe it's that he's been out of the Seam too long. Longer than he was in it. Got picky once he had enough. The rest of them aren't yet used to enough.

He trudges at the back of the party. Nobody comments on the cabbage aroma. Ahead of him are six guards and one, well, not quite a prisoner. 

The boy barely looks up when they stop partway down the corridor. He was apprehensive about leaving his holding room and then went along as if resigned to his doom. Shoulders and head down. His shoulder blades are sharp under his shirt. The doctors were starving him till just a few days ago, except they don't call it that. Some components of tracker jacker venom can apparently be stored in body fat. So they've forced his body to consume whatever reserves the Capitol left him with, as part of the process of flushing the poison out. He's a little more docile because of it, which is probably helping make this little trip possible.

Haymitch shoulders between a couple of guards so he can talk to him, and the kid spares him a glance filled with disgust.

They've had it out once, a couple days ago, because he thought it might help the boy if he tried to do the right thing. If he made an attempt at voicing guilt. But it was met with the most amazingly self-contradictory bile. The kid can't even settle on why he hates everything and everyone. A perfect storm of acid, self-pity, rather personal insults, and blind anger. Good thing Haymitch never gave much of a shit in his life. Done; moving on.

“So there's a kitchen in there,” he says, nodding toward the door. One guard sidesteps so that the window in the door is visible, but the boy doesn't look. “They set it up for baking. You can go in.”

The boy doesn't move. “Set it up for baking,” he repeats.

“So they tell me. Like I'd know. There's flour and bowls and such.” Haymitch is trying not to be irritated. He tried to ask Sae what would typically be needed to make some bread, but she chortled and said she's a cook, not a baker, whatever that means, and Haymitch didn't feel like taking a poll of the whole remainder of the district, so he just let the Thirteen people stock it the way they'd do for themselves. He took a look at the room earlier to see if it seemed safe for the boy. As long as he doesn't go crazy and start whacking his head on the counters they're probably okay. It's the girl who does that kind of thing, anyway. Though he prefers to think she's too busy for that, off in District Two.

The boy is just staring at him. “So it's a zoo.”

“What?”

“A zoo. Isn't that the word? Where the Capitol puts wild animals in imitations of wherever they actually live and watches them.”

Haymitch is trying to figure out how to respond to this when the boy adds, “For fun.”

He grits his teeth. He would like to tell the boy exactly how much wheedling and dubious promises of military value he had to invoke to get them to agree to this little experiment. He would like to tell him in some way he'd understand, like maybe with knuckles to the face. But he only says, “If you waste the ingredients, or destroy anything in there on purpose, then your little maiden voyage out of the psych ward is not gonna get any do-overs. They don't allow waste, here.”

The boy glares at him for a while, then turns his head to stare through the door. Haymitch can see some bowls and things that he thinks are measuring cups on the counter. After awhile with nobody moving, the boy spits, “I assume you're taking me back? To the hospital?”

“You can try this first,” Haymitch says, trying, trying so hard, to be patient.

The boy pushes a long furious breath out his nose. Then he nods. 

So they open the door to the kitchen and all go through, and then there's the complex ritual of how they take the handcuffs off somebody when they'd really rather not, and then Haymitch and the guards file out and leave Peeta behind. 

They split up, four guards outside the door, two plus Haymitch to an observation room down the corridor where they have the feed from the newly installed security cameras. 

The boy is still rubbing his wrists. They have him in a short-sleeved version of the standard-issue gray shirt so that he can't hide anything up his sleeves, and the restraints he's always in leave marks on his pale arms. He makes a circuit of the kitchen, looking around suspiciously, and it's clear he knows there must be cameras. Then he goes to the big bin on the counter, takes off the lid, and studies the flour. He reaches a hand toward it and Haymitch thinks for a second he's going to grab a handful and do — something with it.

The boy's hand hesitates just over the flour. As if it's something sleeping he might startle, as if it's the skin of a girl he thinks might be mad at him. As if it's something he's afraid to claim. Then, fingertips first, he slowly, gently, sinks his hand into the flour. 

He stays motionless, his hand resting in flour up to the wrist, long enough that one of the guards in the observation room says, “What do you think it's been, about a minute?” and without an answer starts the timer on his communicuff.

Peeta spends fourteen minutes with his hand in the flour. 

Then he blinks and looks dizzy and pulls his hand back. He looks at it and rubs it together with the other hand and then stumbles a bit on his way to the door. He knocks and one of the guards says, “Yes?”

“How long do I have?”

“Beg pardon?” The guard probably sounds muffled to the boy, and vice versa. They're talking through the window in the door.

“How long can I stay here? Because different breads take different amounts of time.”

_Huh_ , Haymitch thinks. The guard thinks about whether he should answer, then says, “Two hours max, son. You've already used a bunch of it.”

“Oh. Okay. There's baking powder.” And then he walks away from the window. Lays out some ingredients and utensils and messes with the oven. He never touches the screen they provided for calling up recipes, though possibly he doesn't realize that's what it's for. From memory, working slowly, he stirs together a dough and puts it in pans in the oven. He sits on the floor while it's baking and Haymitch watches over the camera as a couple of crazy spells come and go, his hands clenching spasmodically.

The boy's okay when it's time to take the loaves out of the oven, though. When he has them out on the counter, steam rising, Haymitch starts to think he can smell fresh bread all the way down the corridor. 

The boy puts his head on his arms on the counter and waits. He has to be hungry. Haymitch has seen what they're feeding him. And anyway no seventeen-year-old boy should be able to sit there with two loaves of bread made of perfectly safe ingredients untouched in front of him, fresh from the oven. But what was it he told the girl in their first Games? That he grew up eating stale bread, with fresh only for paying customers? Maybe he remembers. Because he sits there breathing in slowly, waiting for his two hours to be up. As if figuring this is all he's ever going to get. 

Nobody thought to discuss what to do with any bread that might result from this experiment. So they leave it where it is and lock the door behind them when they take Peeta back to the psych ward. He's expressionless, tired maybe. Right before they leave him strapped to his hospital bed he says to Haymitch coolly, “This doesn't make me believe you, you know.” 

Haymitch has the one guard with the key return to the kitchen with him. He gets his knife out of his pocket and cuts off a corner of the bread. Someone needs to test it out. So he eats it, and it's pretty good, better than the usual fare around here if not quite as good as the bakery bread he remembers. When nothing bad happens to him in the next few hours, they put the bread in the rotation for tomorrow's breakfast. They say nothing at all about where it came from.


	14. Dignity and compassion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are lights in the ceiling and a drain in the floor. If you're inside the room and looking at the door, Peeta is to the left and Annie is to the right. There is nothing else that she has to say and nothing else that she wants to think about." 
> 
> Johanna and Peeta during their captivity in the Capitol. Warning for torture, obviously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been meaning to post this since the second Mockingjay trailer came out ... or possibly longer, since the draft has been sitting on my computer for like a year and a half. I'm on tumblr at keeptheearthbelowff — come say hi!

Johanna has never seen walls like this before, except maybe the last arena. Sometimes you can see through them, but not hear, like the way the arena contained its threats in separate hours of the clock; but sometimes vice versa. Sometimes they are normal walls, opaque and soundproof. 

The ceiling and floor are unremarkable by comparison. There are lights in the ceiling and a drain in the floor.

If you're inside the room and looking at the door, Peeta is to the left and Annie is to the right.

There is nothing else that she has to say and nothing else that she wants to think about. 

↔

After one of the times, when she's lying on the floor, still working on breathing evenly and blinking the water out of her eyes, she notices that the wall between her and Peeta is transparent now. Usually they just have the soundproofing off. He sometimes calls to her and asks what's happening to her and offers pointless reassurances. She can rarely manage to reply, which might be why he doesn't call to her much lately. He sounded distressed, and she knows that's the purpose of the whole thing — to make him wonder what they're doing to her. 

Lately she's had a lot to wonder about in terms of what they're doing to him. His distress and pain haven't gone away, but rage has started showing up. Bewilderment. Fury. He seems to talk in his sleep when in pain, and the words that show up in proximity to Katniss's name have been changing. None of this is going on right now, though, when she notices that the wall is clear. He's just sitting near it, awake, facing her direction.

There's a hissing sound, and something changes in the air. Both of them look around instinctively, as if, were the air being filled with poison or sucked away, they could spot a way to do something about it. 

There must be something Peeta can see from his angle that she can't, because his eyebrows go up and he reaches a hand toward the wall. Where the wall was. His hand goes right through as if it's mere light or sound. He waits a moment and then scoots across into her room. 

He doesn't get to his feet, and, closer now, she can see a lot of marks on him that his dirty t-shirt and shorts don't cover. He stops right next to her on the wet floor.

She knows what she looks like, or as much as she wants to know. Naked, sodden, burned, bloody between the legs, shaved head, bruised and swollen. He doesn't ask how she is, or tell her it'll be okay. He's learned that much, at least, then. He looks at her and then pulls off his shirt and drapes it over her. 

“Go back,” she chokes.

What he does instead is gather her up and hold her in his arms as if she weren't disgusting. “You're not alone,” he says.

She knows. She knows what will happen now. She lets her face lie against this boy's chest and thinks, _I don't know why they didn't rescue you, I can't figure out what they're doing to you or why they aren't doing it to me and Annie, I wanted to believe you and that girl were possible, if we were somewhere else I'd take you to bed, I wish you were anywhere else at all_. 

“Go back,” she grinds out again. But he doesn't, and to hurry along the lesson he's about to be given, she says, “Annie's on the other side of me and I can see her pretty often and they're treating her like me but less of it.”

He just nods, because there's nothing he can actually do with this information. But the air hisses again and then water starts to flow across the floor of her room. He has just enough time to look around and realize he really has been hearing water all these times. Then the electricity starts.

When it's over, the water drained away, they lie next to each other for a long time. She isn't sure whether her nose is bleeding or running. His legs twitch against hers, and he sobs.

When he rolls to face her and makes as if to examine how she is, the water starts flowing again. And she does not blame him in the slightest for how he shies back and slams into the transparent now-solid wall separating his dry, safe room from hers.

He reaches back toward her after the electricity stops, though. And as soon as his hand touches her shoulder, it starts again.

She has trouble thinking when this one is over. This is more than she's used to having happen all in a row. Her breathing sounds bad in her ears.

She doesn't protest when he drags himself back into his room. Not even when he doesn't try to bring her with him. Not even when he goes to the effort of taking his shirt back on his way out. It was kind of nice to have clothing, for a minute, even if she wasn't planning to wear it. But at least he's learned. It didn't even take that long to train the compassion out of him.

↔

She was mistaken to think it was _out_ , though, and probably so was the Capitol, and maybe even Peeta himself. She realizes this fact much later, when she finally hears the whole story about the bread and his mother and Katniss. When she puts that together with the thing she'd already heard about their Victory Tour speech in Eleven, plus the warnings he'd scream in the psych ward in Thirteen even though they drugged him every time he tried to tell people Katniss was out to kill them. He was used to kindness being punished. He was used to giving up and waiting and trying again.

Katniss asks her, a few years into the peace, so nervous that Johanna assumes it's going to be a question about sex, why Johanna was willing to die to protect the two of them in the Quarter Quell. “I know why you'd kill for us, for the cause,” she says, “but why would you die for us?”

Johanna only sort of remembers what she told Haymitch and Finnick all those years ago when they recruited her to the plan for the arena. Probably that she didn't care if she died for the cause, that she wasn't fit to live in the world after, that she'd gladly take as many out with her as she could. She knows she didn't tell them the truth. It was shameful, at that point in her life, to find some stunted corner of her brain that actually wanted to believe that real people could live their lives with dignity and compassion. Shameful and stupid to think that a pair of teenagers could live like that, let alone a pair of victors who were surely just as fucked-up as the rest of them, and that she wanted them to show her the way. 

That information is somewhere inside some walls. Where light and sound sometimes seem like they go through, but nothing has ever really gotten in or out.

“I forget,” she tells her friend.


	15. Only then I am clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is a scene I'd love to see in the final MJ movie. I'm kinda hoping that, with MJ1 echoing emotionally meaningful stuff that didn't make it into the THG movie (e.g. Katniss watching Peeta through her own reflection in the glass), some echoes of the book's streamside scene aren't too much to hope for — you know, with conversation, Katniss checking Peeta out, and that lovely, awkward compassion and trust. Maybe hints of elements from CF too. So, this is an altered and expanded version of the few paragraphs shortly after they arrive in Tigris's cellar. My operating assumptions are that the kiss happened as written earlier that day, but that there wasn't lingering in the dead woman's apartment to chitchat while finding disguises.
> 
> Title from Hozier's “Take Me to Church,” which seems to fit Everlark in this timeframe.  
> ↔

The only movement is at the far end of the dim room. Cressida, slouched against the wall, turns her eyes toward it — and she turns the little handheld camera, too, because she had to take it out of her back pocket to sit down, and — her fingers find the recording button almost of their own volition.

She can't sleep. Pollux is out, finally, after days of waking horror. Over by the cellar steps, Gale is lying unconscious with amateur stitches in his neck. Peeta retreated to the far end of the room as soon as he wasn't needed to help hold Gale still. The rest of them left him alone while they sorted out their remaining possessions and makeshift pallets and minor injuries. It feels like a bad idea to stop moving, stop running, even though there's nothing left to do but desperately rearrange objects in a dank cellar until they all simply collapse. Here under the stairs, the hidden door, the obscuring racks of furs, this is a dead end — probably literally. There's nowhere left to go.

But Peeta's pressed himself into the farthest corner of the cellar, and Katniss goes to him.

She kneels at arm's length. The dingy yellow light spilling from the bathroom into the main room leaves her backlit, makes Peeta a shadow. “Hey. Let's get you cleaned up. Bandages if you need some.”

Cressida did notice blood on his face and clothes earlier. His own, or Gale's, or somebody they left behind in the sewer. She can't see the stain now, not in this crappy lighting, but she can see that Peeta shakes his head without looking up. “I'm fine.”

Katniss doesn't move. “Everybody else is already cleaned up. Come on.” While waiting for a response, she glances around. The corner he's in, the space she's blocking. No way out. A second later, she says, “I'll go in there and wash my hands and start getting some bandages out for you, and you can come in when you want.”

She rises to her feet — not as smoothly as usual; Cressida can hear a joint pop — and does as she said she would.

After a minute, Peeta pulls himself upright and follows her. He lingers just outside the doorway. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Come over here.”

Cressida stares at them, then down at the tiny screen on her handheld. They're arranged with the big commercial washbasin separating them. Reasonable precaution, she supposes, alone together in a cramped space, though it suggests that she isn't about to get another kiss on record. But she almost doesn't care. They've framed themselves in the sharp black edge of the doorway, under the yellow lightbulb, in profile. The composition is classic.

Peeta rests his hands on the edge of the washbasin. Katniss lines up items from the first aid kit where they're all visible to him — a roll of bandages, scissors, a tube of ointment. She wets a cloth under the tap and holds it out in his direction. “For your face. So I can see where the cut is.”

“I'm not hurt,” he tells her, but takes the cloth and rubs it over his face and neck anyway. His hair has no blood in it — it's the brightest thing in the room other than the lightbulb.

She peers at him across the washbasin. “Well, I can clean your shirt.” She gestures at his collar.

“No, it's fine,” he repeats, lifting his hands as if to remind her they're still shackled together. But Katniss is already reaching for the key.

What follows is a strange, awkward dance. He eventually lets her unlock the two halves of the handcuffs. With his hands free, he strips off the layers of his uniform hesitantly. Katniss takes the protective vest from him and wipes the blood off, then dabs at the shoulder of his jacket. Neither of them talks about whose blood they're washing away. She looks up from the jacket to see him fidgeting with the neck of his shirt. “I know it's kind of cold in here, but those spots will only take a minute to get out.”

“No, it's —” His voice is a mumble. “I'm kind of marked up.”

She half-shrugs. “Doesn't matter to me.” Her attention goes back to the stains on his jacket.

After a moment, he pulls his shirt over his head. And Katniss lifts her eyes again, while he can't see her do it. Across his stomach and chest, clusters of scars catch the light. When he pulls his head free of the fabric, her gaze shifts down his arms, where the military training for propos has rebuilt some muscle. He methodically works the sleeves off over the handcuffs.

“I know you're looking,” he bites out, defiantly, and she startles. “I can explain.”

She shakes her head quickly. “No. I mean, only if you want to.”

He pauses. She won't meet his eyes. He goes back to tugging at his sleeves in silence.

When he holds the shirt out to her, she stares past it to his wrists, now visible. “What happened there?”

She reaches not for his arm — he's pulling his hands back anyway — but instead snatches up a dangling sleeve of the shirt and holds it to the light. She inspects the dark blood there, then looks accusingly at his wrists. “How'd that happen?”

Peeta won't answer her. Katniss tugs the shirt out of his grip, the movement gentler than her words, gentler than her hold on him down in the tunnels earlier this day. When she pulls the key from her pocket again and unlocks each cuff, his body is stiff and passive.

Bloody lines around his wrists, sliced or rubbed raw by the edges of the straps. He won't look at her. Katniss puts the handcuffs on the edge of the washbasin and stands with his hands cradled lightly in hers. Dark armored figure across from his bright, bare body.

Quietly, she tells him, “You don't have to wear those if they're hurting you.”

He twitches as if to draw his hands back toward him, the same protective movement. “I … it helps if I can pull on them. I can focus on it.”

She hesitates. “Okay. But we need to wash them so they don't get infected.”

“I don't see how we're going to live long enough to worry about that.”

She doesn't refute it. She makes no sudden movements as she rinses his wrists and pats them dry. Spreads ointment, wraps bandages.

“I have something the doctors suggested to me. When I'm losing track of things,” she offers tentatively. “It's just to start with the basic stuff, the stuff I know is true, and work outward from there. Tell the facts to myself.”

“Like the multiplication tables?” he says blankly.

She almost smiles. “No, like … here's what I say. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I'm seventeen years old. My home is District Twelve. There is no District Twelve anymore. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. They captured … ” She trails off.

“So … I'd say, I'm Peeta Mellark. I'm —” He stops. Still confused. “Is it really still the same year?”

Her eyes widen. “Yes.”

“Oh.” Long pause. “So I'm seventeen years old. I … My …” He can't seem to find anything else to say. He looks at his hands, at the handcuffs on the edge of the washbasin. His gaze eventually meets hers, helplessly.

“Well, you got the important part.”

“I can't even —” His face tenses up and he drops his head, then twists away from her. A wave of tension rises from his abdomen and curls his shoulders; his hands grip the edge of the washbasin so hard the tendons stand out. He seems to be trying not to breathe.

Her eyes travel over him — the shape of his arms, his back, the bleak yellow light on his hair. The wide bare planes of his shoulders as they shake. Eventually she wets another cloth and wrings it out. She rests her hand on his forearm for a moment. Then brings the cloth to his skin and begins to wash him. Up his arms above the bandages, over the scars on the insides of his elbows that are shiny and raw in the weak light. She rinses the cloth and edges partway around the washbasin so that she can reach his ribs, his chest, a bit over his shoulders. She doesn't circle behind him. He picks up his head at some point, and she runs the damp cloth very gently down his neck, across his collarbones, his forehead, his cheeks.

She wrings out the cloth for the last time. Then, reluctantly, she goes back to trying to blot the blood out of his shirt.

Half to herself, she says, “You could come out of this, you know. I bet you could.”

“What do you mean?” He sounds far away.

“You're doing so much better. You could have a life on the other side of this, you could be fine. Find somewhere to live. Maybe District Four. We liked the — um, you liked the ocean. You could paint there. Or you could have a bakery. You could live in District Nine where they grow the wheat.”

“I don't know anybody in those places. I don't know anybody anywhere.”

“Well. You could meet people. You're good at that. You could have … a whole normal life. Meet a girl whose family grows wheat, some girl who's nice. Little kids. You could do that.”

They're both silent.

Out in the darkness, Cressida swallows hard.

Peeta's voice, when he speaks again, is spent. “Why would you say that?”

She's nearly inaudible. “I don't want you to give up. You have a chance to start over. Start clean.”

The idea must be unbearable; his face and shoulders sag. “I just want this to stop. I want everything to stop.” His eyes fall shut. “I'm so tired, Katniss.”

She stares at him, chin trembling. Looks down before he can open his eyes and see her misery. “You should get some sleep. Your shirt's pretty dry.”

Shirt on, then jacket, then Peeta picks up the handcuffs and straps them back onto his wrists himself, over the bandages. He doesn't connect them yet. “I'm going to put these around one of those bars that supports the stairs,” he mumbles.

“Won't it be uncomfortable to sleep that way?”

“I'd rather not wake up and find out I've … done something without knowing it.”

She nods, resigned.

They turn off the light, and the yellow-lit frame in Cressida's handheld disappears. In darkness, she hears them shuffle to the two unoccupied piles of furs, the snap of the handcuffs fastening, and a rattle as he tests that they'll hold.

“Peeta?” Katniss murmurs.

After a moment, he says, “Yeah?”

“Let me know if you need anything, okay? Even just to talk? You can wake me up. I won't mind.”

He turns that over in his thoughts for a long time. “Thank you.”

When their breathing slows, Cressida switches off the camera.


End file.
